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Loading... The Mind's Eyeby Oliver Sacks
It was okay, but it got really long about 2/3 through when he went into detail on his own condition. It was interesting to learn about, but a lot of it consisted of really dull diary entries. (  ) heike6 | May 2, 2013 |  I like all Sacks' books about the neurological problems and adjustments of the people whose stories he tells. However, when he comes to relating his own problems, that's another matter. He goes into far too much detail as though he had confused his audience - most of us are neither personal fans of Oliver Sacks himself (rather than his work) nor are we neurologists ourselves. We just got sucked into neurology-as-a-popular-science by the brilliant Awakenings, or the film of that book starring Robin Williams, who will forever personify Sacks, at least in my mind. A 3.5 star book (would have been four without the endless meanderings of Sacks as his own subject) and I'm not feeling generous, so three stars. If you enjoy Sacks, you might also enjoy another writer-neurologist, Dr. Harold L. Klawans. (  ) Petra.Xs | Apr 2, 2013 | Outstanding set of essays and case histories of neurological disorders concerning visual abnormalities such as blindness and aphasia. In parts, a bit more technical than I would have liked, but overall a fascinating look into the processes of the human brain. (  ) pidgeon92 | Apr 1, 2013 | I always enjoy Sacks, who narrated the prefatory remarks and the chapter about his own visual problems in the audiobook of this volume. The focus (hah) here is on problems (and compensatory strategies) related to seeing, sometimes optic, sometimes neurological. Sacks's appreciation for his subjects' humanity is refreshing compared to the objectifying and clinically distanced tone that is found in many case studies, including some that are trying hard to present people compassionately. For this alone, quite aside from my interest in neurology, I would praise and read Sacks. (  ) OshoOsho | Mar 30, 2013 | Oliver Sacks takes on the topic of vision, specifically the ways in which the brain deals with and compensates for problems with the eyes, and the ways it can create visual problems for people whose eyes are perfectly fine. The first five chapters introduce us to people with various issues of visual perception, including stories of people slowly losing the ability to read or to recognize objects, people (including the author) with an inability to recognize faces, and one woman who is learning to see in 3D after living her entire life without the benefit of binocular vision. These little medical tales of Sacks' are always interesting in the way they illustrate the wonderful complexity of our brains and the bizarre things that can happen when they malfunction, and, as always, I appreciate the way he focuses on each of these folks as human beings, rather than reducing them to "case studies." But these chapters feel like they cover a lot of familiar ground if you've read his previous books; in fact, he often refers back to material from those earlier books, especially The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. (I did learn one interesting and personally relevant new thing from the chapter on face-blindness, though, which is that it's very often accompanied by difficulty recognizing places. I don't have either problem in the full-blown form Sacks suffers from -- he has great trouble recognizing both his good friends and his own house -- but I do have some difficulty with faces, and I have a truly terrible sense of direction. It had never occurred to me before that those two things might be related.) Chapter six consists of a journal Sacks kept after being diagnosed with a tumor in his eye, which caused all kinds of strange visual effects. This was, I think, the most interesting section of the book, both because offers a first-hand account of some fascinating perceptional weirdness, and because of its frank and personal nature. The final chapter discusses blindness and to what extent blind people have a visual memory or imagination. The answer seems to be that it varies, and that nobody seems to really understand exactly how visualization even works in the brain, anyway, so this chapter is mostly full of anecdotes and questions, but very few answers. I found the book worth reading overall (if a bit hypochondria-inducing in places), but it's not nearly as compelling as some of his other works. (  ) bragan | Dec 4, 2012 |
 Mr. Brain can be a demon from hell when it decides to turn against its body.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0307272087, Hardcover)In The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world.There is Lilian, a concert pianist who becomes unable to read music and is eventually unable even to recognize everyday objects, and Sue, a neurobiologist who has never seen in three dimensions, until she suddenly acquires stereoscopic vision in her fifties. There is Pat, who reinvents herself as a loving grandmother and active member of her community, despite the fact that she has aphasia and cannot utter a sentence, and Howard, a prolific novelist who must find a way to continue his life as a writer even after a stroke destroys his ability to read. And there is Dr. Sacks himself, who tells the story of his own eye cancer and the bizarre and disconcerting effects of losing vision to one side. Sacks explores some very strange paradoxes—people who can see perfectly well but cannot recognize their own children, and blind people who become hyper-visual or who navigate by “tongue vision.” He also considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery—or vision, for that matter? Why is it that, although writing is only five thousand years old, humans have a universal, seemingly innate, potential for reading? The Mind’s Eye is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation. And it provides a whole new perspective on the power of language and communication, as we try to imagine what it is to see with another person’s eyes, or another person’s mind. (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:46:18 -0400) Includes stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and faculties: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, and the sense of sight. This book is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation, and it provides a whole new perspective on the power of language and communication, as we try to imagine what it is to perceive through another person's eyes, or another person's mind.… (more) |
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